Most of what has been flown here from the United States is Uzbekistan collecting its own citizens, and this page says so first. The third-country record is six people recorded as arriving on 10 March 2026, with no nationalities, no source and no trace. A person who is not an Uzbek national has no complaint to the Committee against Torture here, no mechanism that can visit them, and one international route that takes years.
What the record showsA receiving stateAs of September 9, 2026
Arrangement reported
Investigating
Transfers reported
Yes
People with protection among them
Investigating
Onward return reported
Investigating
These are statements about the public record, not about the country. "Investigating" means the Coalition has not located a report or a decision on that point and is still looking. It is not a finding that the thing did not happen.
AlertTortureUzbekistan
Basis: the findings of the United Nations Committee against Torture, the record kept by the United States Department of State, and the report by two monitoring organisations that six third-country nationals were sent here in March 2026 and that nobody knows where they are. The Coalition designates on those reports and sets out below how thin the third-country record for Uzbekistan actually is.
Third Country Deportation Watch, and the tracker kept by the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants
Six third-country nationals were removed from the United States to Uzbekistan on 10 March 2026. Details about their whereabouts are unknown. No nationality is given and neither project cites a source for the figure.
Committee against Torture, concluding observations on Uzbekistan, 28 November 2019
The Committee addressed torture and ill-treatment in custody, incommunicado detention, and the transfer of people to states where they faced a risk of torture.
United States Department of State, 2023 report
Officials beat a detainee and used a stun gun to get him to confess. The 2023 edition carries the detail; the shortened 2024 edition does not.
The same report, 2024 edition
The Ombudsperson’s office received 147 complaints of torture, leading to the initiation of one criminal case.
United Nations Treaty Collection, the depositary record
Uzbekistan has made no declaration under article 22, so no individual may complain to the Committee against Torture, and it is not a party to the Optional Protocol, so there are no preventive visits and no national mechanism owed.
What an Alert meansDesignated September 9, 2026Review: on who the six of 10 March 2026 were, and where they are
The Coalition’s position. This state agreed to receive people who are not its nationals, moved against their will, under a programme United States federal courts have found punitive and whose purpose was stated publicly before the agreement was made. On the Coalition’s position it has knowingly facilitated that programme, and the wrong is complete at the moment of agreement. Nothing on this page is offered as mitigation. What a receiving state agrees to.
What has happened
Most of what has been flown from the United States to Tashkent is Uzbekistan collecting its own citizens. That is not a third-country removal, and this page says so before it says anything else, because a figure that merges the two makes the record look larger than it is and easier to attack than it should be.
Arrangement. None disclosed. No text, no signing date, no legal form, and no acknowledgement beyond an announcement of partnership. Investigating.
30 April 2025. One flight, funded by Uzbekistan, carrying 131 Uzbek, Kazakh and Kyrgyz nationals. Most were Uzbekistan’s own citizens. The Kazakh and Kyrgyz nationals were met at Tashkent by their consuls and continued to their own countries.
10 March 2026. Six third-country nationals. No nationalities, no source cited, whereabouts unknown.
11 March 2026. A separate charter returning 65 Uzbekistani nationals. Different day, different people, and frequently merged with the entry above.
The figure of 137, and what it is made of.
One hundred and thirty-one plus six. The arithmetic is right and the two halves are different kinds of fact. The first is a repatriation flight paid for by the receiving state, whose own Secretary of Homeland Security thanked the President of Uzbekistan for sending an aircraft to return people to their home country. The second is six people described in a single sentence on two monitoring sites, with no nationality, no source and no trace.
The whole third-country case for Uzbekistan rests on that six. The Coalition prints it that way rather than behind a rounder number, and has written to both projects to ask what the six rests on.
Third Country Deportation Watch, maintained by Human Rights First and Refugees International. United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Third Country Deportations tracker. Radio Free Europe, Uzbek service, 1 May 2025. Global Detention Project, 4 December 2025, which records that the precise number of non-Uzbeks on the April 2025 flight is unknown. All linked below.
What the two governments say, and why it is mostly accurate.
The Coalition sets out the strongest material against its own framing. Uzbekistan describes this as consular work for its own nationals: a foreign ministry spokesman said the people concerned were citizens who had violated visa requirements or overstayed, and that the process was organised on humanitarian and legal principles to ensure a dignified and safe return. For the April 2025 flight and for every 2026 flight the Coalition can verify, that description is essentially correct. The United States Embassy in Tashkent announces these operations openly and gives figures.
Human Rights Watch is the leading monitor of Uzbekistan and its World Report for 2026 says nothing at all about United States removals to the country. The Coalition records that too. A reader who leaves this page believing Uzbekistan is a major third-country destination will have taken the wrong thing from it.
What the record says about Uzbekistan itself
The thinness of the transfer record does not make the country record thin. If a person who is not an Uzbek national is put down in Tashkent, this is what is documented about the place they are in.
What the Committee against Torture found.
The Committee adopted its concluding observations on Uzbekistan on 28 November 2019. It addressed the definition of torture in Uzbek law, the treatment of people in custody, incommunicado detention, and transfers to states where a person faced a risk of torture. It was alarmed that the Ombudsman referred allegations of torture back to the prosecuting authority, and that of the 101 complaints received in 2018 the office found evidence of torture in none of them.
That last finding is the one to hold on to, because the Ombudsman is otherwise the body this page would send a family to. The 2024 United States report records the same shape five years later: 147 complaints of torture received, one criminal case opened.
Committee against Torture, concluding observations on the fifth periodic report of Uzbekistan, CAT/C/UZB/CO/5, adopted 28 November 2019 at the sixty-eighth session, issued 14 January 2020. Linked below.
What the two State Department editions say, and what the second one dropped.
The 2023 edition runs to forty-eight pages and the 2024 edition to sixteen. Gone from the second are the sections on disappearance, on arbitrary arrest and detention, on the denial of a fair public trial, on prison and detention centre conditions, and the subsection on refoulement.
The detail that matters most for this page is in the 2023 edition and not the 2024 one: officials beat a detainee and used a stun gun to make him confess to being a drug dealer. Where this page needs that level of specificity it cites 2023 and says so.
The 2023 refoulement subsection recorded that while there were no reports of the government returning Afghan refugees, Afghans reported that officials often encouraged them to return to Afghanistan. The 2024 edition keeps the substance without the heading and puts it more strongly, saying they were often compelled to return. The Coalition treats a heading that disappears while the finding hardens as a change in the reporting format, not in the country.
United States Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Uzbekistan, 2023 and 2024 editions, both linked below.
What is open to a person in Uzbekistan
Two of the three doors that exist elsewhere in this project are shut here, and the one that is open is slow.
The Committee against Torture. Closed. Uzbekistan acceded to the Convention on 28 September 1995 but has never made the declaration under article 22, so the Committee has no competence to receive a complaint from an individual. It appears in the ratification table of the depositary record and nowhere among the states that have made the declaration.
Preventive visits. Closed. Uzbekistan is not a party to the Optional Protocol. The Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture has no mandate, and no national preventive mechanism is owed, whatever a domestic body may be called. The Committee recommended in 2019 that Uzbekistan give further consideration to ratifying it.
The Human Rights Committee. Open, and it is the only international route there is. Uzbekistan acceded to the first Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on the same day it acceded to the Convention against Torture, 28 September 1995. An individual may bring a communication. It requires that domestic remedies be exhausted, that the same matter not be before another international procedure, and a signed authorisation where a lawyer or a family member acts. It is not an emergency route. Registration to a decision routinely takes years, and the interim measures the Committee can request are not treated as binding in practice.
Domestic. The law on the legal status of foreign citizens gives foreign nationals the right to complain to state bodies, and provides that a decision on deportation may be appealed to the court. That provision is the first thing to use, and the finding above about what the Ombudsman does with torture complaints is the reason not to stop there.
United Nations Treaty Collection, chapters IV-9, IV-9-b and IV-5, the depositary’s own record rather than a secondary table. Law LRU-692 of 4 June 2021, articles 22 and 35. All linked below.
The first days
This is the shortest list of steps on the site, and the shortness is the finding. Independent organisations in Uzbekistan face registration obstacles, and the Coalition could not verify a single lawyer or organisation in the country that assists detained non-citizens.
What exists, in the order in which it usually matters
Call the person’s own consulate first
This is the realistic first call, and it is first for a reason. When 131 people arrived from the United States in April 2025, the Kazakh and Kyrgyz nationals among them were met at Tashkent by their own consuls. A consulate is the one body with a standing right to ask where a national of its state is being held.
Write to the Ombudsman, and read the next line before you rely on it
A person deprived of liberty may make written complaints to the Ombudsman without limit. The Committee against Torture recorded in 2019 that the office refers torture allegations back to the prosecuting authority and found evidence of torture in none of the 101 complaints it received in 2018. Write anyway, because the letter is a dated record that the complaint was made.
If there is a deportation decision, appeal it to the court
Article 35 of the law on the legal status of foreign citizens provides that a decision on deportation may be appealed to the court. Domestic remedies also have to be exhausted before the Human Rights Committee will look at anything, so this step is both the immediate remedy and the gateway to the only international one.
Preserve everything, for a case that will take years
The Human Rights Committee is the only international body open here and it is slow. Dates, names of officials, medical records, the text of every decision, and a signed authorisation from the person if someone else is to act for them. What is gathered in the first week is what the case will be built from.
Who is reachable in Uzbekistan
Very little, and the Coalition would rather say so than fill this section with numbers that do not answer.
Official complaint bodies
The Ombudsman. Receives written complaints from people deprived of liberty
Authorised Person of the Oliy Majlis for Human Rights
A person in detention may write to the office without limit on the number of complaints. Read this alongside the finding of the Committee against Torture in 2019 that the office refers torture allegations back to the prosecuting authority and found evidence of torture in none of the 101 complaints received in 2018, and the record in the 2024 United States report of 147 torture complaints leading to one criminal case. When checked, the office’s own website displayed a banner stating that it was running in test mode, and its English contact page published no email address.
Address
57/1 Mirzo Ulugbek Street, Yashnobod district, Tashkent 100007
Receives written submissions from people who cannot telephone, including people in detention
United Nations in Uzbekistan
The office keeps a public line on Wednesdays from 14:00 to 17:00. It states that written submissions are accepted only in exceptional cases from people unable to communicate by telephone, and gives people in detention or prison as its own example. It also expects national bodies to have been approached first, which is what the steps above are for.
The Coalition looked for an organisation or a named lawyer in Uzbekistan assisting detained non-citizens and could not verify one. Ezgulik Human Rights Society exists and publishes at ezgulikuz.org; two different addresses for it are in circulation, no email could be confirmed, and its most recent published work is an annual report for 2023, so it is not listed above. The National Centre for Human Rights appears only in a third-party business directory and its details could not be confirmed from the Centre itself. The contact pages of the refugee agency and the migration organisation in Tashkent could not be reached on 9 September 2026. Investigating.
For officials who administer this
This section is addressed to officials in Uzbekistan, and it is not written as a warning. The great majority of what has been flown here from the United States is consular work, and the state has done it openly and paid for it. That is a reasonable thing for a government to do for its own citizens, and this page says so.
The six people recorded as arriving on 10 March 2026 are a different matter, not because of anything alleged against Uzbekistan, but because nobody outside can say who they were or where they went, and because a person who is not an Uzbek national has, in this country, no complaint to the Committee against Torture, no preventive mechanism able to visit them, and one international route that takes years. Where the machinery is thin, the record kept at the moment of arrival carries the weight the machinery would otherwise carry. A list of who arrived, of what status they were given, and of where they went next, is the thing that would answer this page.
The dated record
Every entry below is a fact with a source.
28 Sep 1995
Uzbekistan accedes to the Convention against Torture and, on the same day, to the first Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. No declaration under article 22 is made, then or since.
28 Nov 2019
The Committee against Torture adopts its concluding observations on the fifth periodic report, recording that it is alarmed that the Ombudsman refers torture allegations back to the prosecuting authority and found evidence of torture in none of the 101 complaints received in 2018.
21 Feb 2025
Uzbekistan’s foreign ministry says its missions have formally requested information from the United States about third-country removals. Reported figures on the United States list: 975 Uzbek, 369 Kazakh, 319 Kyrgyz, 149 Tajik and 40 Turkmen nationals.
30 Apr 2025
One flight from New York to Tashkent, funded by Uzbekistan, carrying 131 Uzbek, Kazakh and Kyrgyz nationals. The United States Secretary of Homeland Security thanks the President of Uzbekistan for sending an aircraft to return people to their home country. The precise number who were not Uzbek nationals is unknown.
Jan 2026
44 Uzbek nationals are returned.
10 Mar 2026
Six third-country nationals are removed from the United States to Uzbekistan. No nationalities are given, no source is cited by either monitoring project, and their whereabouts are unknown. Three hundred and fourteen days after the April 2025 flight.
11 Mar 2026
A separate charter returns 65 Uzbekistani nationals. This is not the flight recorded in the entry above, and the two are often merged.
1 May, 12 Jun and 3 Aug 2026
Further returns of Uzbek nationals, of 26, 24 and 18 people.
What is not established
That any written instrument exists. That any person removed to Uzbekistan held withholding of removal or protection under the Convention against Torture ordered by a United States court; no filing, report or account says so. Who the six of 10 March 2026 were, what the figure rests on, and where they are. That anyone was moved onward to Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan or Russia. No Afghan national is documented as having been moved through Tashkent, and the Afghan third-country removals reported in 2026 went to the Central African Republic. What happened on arrival to anyone: no detention, charge or release is documented.
The Coalition writes Investigating rather than none found, because the second phrase reads as though a question has been answered when it has only been asked.
What this page does not yet carry
The source for the six. The Coalition has asked both monitoring projects and will publish the answer, including an answer that the figure cannot be supported.
The Department of Homeland Security announcement of 30 April 2025, which is the primary United States record of that flight. The page returned an error on both attempts and the Coalition has cited it by reference rather than summarising it from reporting.
Confirmed contact routes for the refugee agency and the migration organisation in Tashkent, and confirmation of whether Ezgulik is still operating.
If you can correct anything here, the Coalition wants to hear it.
Sources
Every source used on this page, linked so it can be read in full rather than through the summaries above.
Compiled 9 September 2026. Where this page summarises a decision or a report, the full document is linked above and should be read rather than relied on through the summary.
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